


Can't Fight This Feeling

by DreamsOfSleep



Category: New Girl
Genre: Accidental First Date, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, First Kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-22
Updated: 2016-11-30
Packaged: 2018-08-23 22:51:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8345878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamsOfSleep/pseuds/DreamsOfSleep
Summary: Pilot AU: Only Nick leaves the party to rescue Jess at the restaurant.





	1. On My Mind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [newgirlystuff](https://archiveofourown.org/users/newgirlystuff/gifts).



> Inspired by [this](http://newgirlystuff.tumblr.com/post/151308709907/nick-did-fall-in-love-with-jess-the-moment-he-saw) blog post by Newgirlystuff, which features a segment of an old TV Guide Magazine interview where Jake Johnson mentions an alternate ending for the pilot where Nick kisses Jess. 
> 
> It would have been really bold of the writers to include a kiss between Nick and Jess at the end of the pilot, but their first kiss in “Cooler” was perfect so I’m glad they didn’t go in that direction. It’s just fun to explore this alternate ending in fanfic. Enjoy!

He doesn’t know why Jess had gotten under his skin. 

Jess wasn’t even here for Christ’s sake, but he’s still thinking about her. Their conversation back at the bar keeps running through his head. He should be focusing on Caroline. This is the first time he and Caroline have spoken to each other, let alone seen each other face-to-face since they broke up. She’s giving him an opening and asking him to get drinks with her and he thinks he can convince her to give them another chance if he plays his cards right. It’s all he’s wanted for the past six months.

But he’s still thinking about Jess so he blurts out, “Actually, hold on, Caroline. I’m sorry, I just…I have to ask you something so that one day I’m not an old man filled with regret. Why did you dump me?”

Caroline looks taken aback by his sudden directness. She furrows her brow and reacts defensively. “Um…okay, are we doing this here, like…now?”

She looks pointedly away from him to the large crowd gathered in front of the club before looking back at him again. This feels like it should be a private conversation but the words are already out there. 

Nick would normally back down. His MO is running from feelings, running away from talking about anything real or uncomfortable. But something inside of him makes him push for an answer instead of letting it go like he normally would. He looks directly into her eyes and asks her again. “Yeah…why did you dump me?”

“Honestly? I didn’t even realize you cared about me until we broke up.”

 _Ouch. That’s what she really thinks of him? That he didn’t care about her at all, even though they were together for four years and were supposed to be in love with each other._ Caroline searches his face, wary of his reaction to her candor. He pastes on a smile, pretends that the truth doesn’t hurt him at all, that she didn’t just crush his heart a little more. “Okay, let’s go get that drink.” 

Nick starts following Caroline, but he pauses when he sees that guy Peter that is supposed to be on a date with Jess right now. Peter approaches the front of the line with that douchebag Benjamin. For some reason, Nick feels compelled to walk over to them.

Peter nods at him in recognition. 

“Hey, where’s Jess?”

“Oh, dude, she texted me like seven times. Like long ones. I just wanna hookup.”

Nick feels a flash of anger at that. “So is she just waiting for you to show up, or did you call her?” He already knows the answer to that question, but he still hopes it isn’t true, hopes the world is a little more like the way Jess thinks it is and not the way he thinks it is.

“Yeah, that’s what I did…I called her,” Peter says, laughing sarcastically. He walks away into the crowd with Benjamin. Nick stares after them, pushing down the urge to run after them and punch that smarmy douchebag in the face. He gets the image of Jess sitting alone in a restaurant all night by herself and that suddenly seems like the worst thing in the entire world, making him feel twisted and anxious in his gut.

Caroline draws his attention back to her again. “Nick, want to go get that drink?”

He doesn’t realize what he’s about to say before he actually says it. “I just remembered I have to do something really important, Caroline. Maybe some other time.”

And suddenly he really can’t do anything else but that, the absolute certainty of that decision coming in with sharp clarity.

Schmidt and Coach had been distracted flirting with some of the girls in line and missed his whole exchange with Peter. Schmidt catches his arm as he realizes that Nick is about to take off. “Where are you going, Nick?”

“I have to do something, Schmidt. You guys go ahead without me.” He pulls his arm out of Schmidt’s grasp and starts running down the street.

“Nick!” Schmidt calls after him. Schmidt knows Nick gets in weird moods sometimes so he doesn't chase after him; he just lets him go. He knows Nick didn’t really want to be at this party in the first place and mainly did it for him. He thinks Caroline said something to freak Nick out. He and Coach really should have come up with a system before they came to this party, some sort of Caroline warning system for Nick. They should have been watching him, making sure he didn’t go flying off the rails again when he was finally getting back to almost normal. Caroline might have been good for Nick once upon a time when he was in law school, but Nick’s unhealthy obsession with her for the past six months hasn’t been doing him any favors to say the least. Nick really needed to move on so it’s probably a good thing that he’s not going to stick around all night, hanging out with Caroline and falling back in love with her before she breaks his heart again. Schmidt makes a mental note to pay Nick back later for facing Caroline to help him get into this party. He briefly looks down the road where Nick disappeared before heading inside the club with Coach.


	2. Worth It

Nick can see Jess through the plate glass window of the restaurant sitting by herself at one of the tables. She has a heartbroken look on her face looking down at the empty table and tearing a piece of bread apart with her hands. She’s all alone having to suffer the humiliation of being stood up by that douchebag all by herself surrounded by all those other couples, knowing that guy wasn’t going to show up since it’s been over an hour, but hoping still because she’s _her_ and she believes the best in everybody even if they don’t deserve it.

_What is he doing? This isn’t something Nick Miller does. He barely knows this girl but he’s showing up at this restaurant to rescue her. He should probably just turn around and go home, forget the whole thing, go back to the party with Schmidt and Coach, go get that drink with Caroline._ But his hand is already reaching out to open the door. He jogs into the restaurant and he finds himself in front of her.

“I’m here! I’m here, Jess,” he says breathlessly. He’s leaning over the back of the chair across from her trying to catch his breath since he ran all the way here from downtown LA. She looks up from the table in wide-eyed surprise at seeing him here.

“Sorry I’m late. Traffic was insane. I hit every single red light driving over here. Must be some sort of record.” The waitress looks him up and down. He can see that she’s thinking, ‘ _This_ guy stood _her_ up?’ He gives her a hard stare back. He’ll play the role of the selfish, callous bastard tonight if that’s what Jess needs him to be. The waitress places a menu on the table for him and walks away, leaving them alone. He turns his head to focus on Jess's face again. The noise of the crowded restaurant fades out and it feels like they are the only two people in the room.

\---

“That guy was a jerk, Jess.” 

“You missed your party to come here and see _me_?” she asks in a small voice. She sounds in awe of the fact that anyone would do anything nice for her even though she’s probably the nicest person Nick has ever met.

“You’re a good person, Jess. You didn't deserve this. He's the one that should be grateful you even gave him the time of day; that guy didn’t deserve you.” 

“This is one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me.” Her voice gets all choked up and her lower lip starts to quiver. Her eyes start welling up. _Shit, she’s going to cry._

“Hey, come on, Jess…Don’t start crying.”

“That’s cool…That’s very, very cool…” she mumbles. She dabs at her eyes with her napkin and gives him a watery smile. She’s trying to keep it together but that’s actually making things worse. It’s like trying to hold in a sneeze; it’s nearly impossible to stop once you get going. She hides her face in her napkin. _Here come the waterworks…_

He’s trying to calm her down but he’s not really good with words and he has never been much good at comforting people. His brain gets the bright idea to start singing “I’ve Had The Time of My Life” from that movie _Dirty Dancing_. It’s been stuck in his head all week since he’s heard it about 500 times since Jess has moved into the loft. The words are pretty much burned into his brain now; the song stuck on permanent repeat somewhere in the deep recesses of his mind. They just come tumbling out of him in his terrible off-key falsetto. _Why the fuck is he singing this song in the middle of this restaurant at the top of his lungs?_ He has no idea. It just felt like the thing to do so he goes with it. All the people in the restaurant end up staring at him like he’s insane, but Jess starts laughing instead of crying so he doesn’t care. She joins in with him and they end up belting out all the words to each other like they are in some demented musical. They get through two bars of the song together before the waitress rushes over to stop them. 

\---

They get kicked out of the restaurant, but Jess has the most radiant smile on her face, just grinning from ear-to-ear, so that makes it totally worth it.

 _Huh, maybe he fell through a wormhole and this is the universe where he lives on a sparkly rainbow and drives a unicorn around and just sings all the time._ He would never admit this to Jess, but she was right and it had been pretty fun. He looks over at her and she grins back at him. He thinks she knows anyway.


	3. Night Out

They end up on the sidewalk outside the restaurant standing slightly apart, facing one another. Their feet are pointed towards each other and for some reason, a small, shy smile appears on Jess's face when she looks down at their feet.

She looks back up at his face. “Guess we can just go home…” she says reluctantly. He can tell she really doesn’t want to though. He doesn’t want to either. He thinks if they just go home she’ll probably start watching _Dirty Dancing_ on a loop again and crying into a bottomless pit of ice cream like she has been doing all week, falling down a shame spiral and crying over another guy who doesn't deserve her tears. They just got her to stop doing that because she got all excited about her date tonight. And just because that douchebag stood her up doesn’t mean it should stop her from going out and doing something fun on a Saturday night.

“Nah, Jess. You’re all dressed up. Let me take you out." This restaurant blows anyway. That douchebag picked it and it’s a douchebag place just like him, stupidly overpriced and the food isn’t even that good. He’ll take her to one of those secret, obscure LA places he knows and keep her company so she won’t have to sit at home and think about that douchebag all night. He thinks she’s his responsibility now since he came all the way down here to rescue her. _Nick Miller reporting for Jess duty._ He already sang to her in the middle of a restaurant so he thinks that means he's 'all in.' He's been pulled into the Jessica Day solar system, a satellite pulled into the gravitational orbit of a strange, new sun.

She flashes that radiant smile at him again as she hands him her car keys. They hop in her car and drive off into the night.

\---

He takes her to one of those tiny hole-in-the-wall places he knows that serves really good burgers and fries. No matter how much money he makes, Nick thinks he’ll always be a burger-and-fries kind of guy. Caroline used to complain that it made him look cheap so he made the effort to try and take her to fancier places more often when they were together, even though he really didn’t like them. _What the fuck was up with all the tiny portions?_ It seemed like the more upscale and pretentious the restaurant was, the smaller the portions were. He was usually still starving afterwards because he could only afford the appetizer or the house salad and he had to save his money to pay for Caroline’s meal. Plus, he had to wear a suit when they went to those places and he _really_ hated that. He thinks one of the main reasons he quit law school was just because he hated wearing a suit so much. He knows it wasn’t really about the suit though. The suit was just a metaphor for his life. It had been more about fitting into that idea of himself, someone else’s idea of him, and waking up every morning feeling like he was suffocating.

When he parks in front of the restaurant, he starts thinking that maybe he should have let her pick the place. This is probably a huge step down for her. That restaurant they were just at might have been douchey and pretentious but those words would describe most of LA anyway. She’s way overdressed for the place they are at right now, definitely slumming it by being with him. She got all dolled up, probably expecting some Prince Charming to sweep her off her feet and show her a fancy time out on the town but instead she gets stuck with him, her grumpy guy roommate, and a half-baked outing on his bartender’s salary.

He looks over at her sitting in the passenger seat. “We don't have to eat here if you don't want to, Jess. You want to go somewhere else?”

“Hell no, I’m dying for a burger. You read my mind, Nick.” He doesn’t know if she’s just being nice, but she seems really excited about it. He gets a warm, pleasant feeling in his gut for being able to make her feel that way. It’s the same feeling he got in the restaurant when he was able to make her laugh.

\---

They go inside to order their food and he waves her off when she tries to pay. “It’s on me, Jess.”

They sit on the hood of her car to eat since there aren’t any open tables. It's a warm night and it's nice sitting out here next to her in the semi-darkness watching people mill about the outdoor patio of the restaurant. He makes up stories about the kinds of lives these people lead in his head, the human dramas of ordinary lives.

They haven’t been talking a lot, but it feels nice to share the silence with her. This isn’t a date so he doesn’t feel nervous like he normally would around a pretty girl. He doesn't feel that anxious need to do things to impress her or to try to hide the fact that his life is a mess and he’ll never be anyone’s idea of the perfect guy. They're practically strangers, but it feels comfortable like running into an old friend you used to know on the street, getting caught up again after a long time apart. _Ah, there you are. Long time no see. Where you been?_ Clicking back onto the same wavelength in an effortless way.

He’s sneaking glances of Jess out of the corner of his eye. She’s taken off her shoes and placed them next to her on the hood of the car. Her long legs dangle off the side of the car, primly crossed at the ankle with her stocking feet resting against the grille. She keeps unconsciously tugging on her dress like she isn’t used to being dressed up this way, putting on someone else’s idea of herself to impress that guy. He thinks he liked her better in that red sundress he saw her in on that first day. He thinks that's really her style. Some would call it old-fashioned, but he likes it because it reminds him of classic Hollywood in a way, something sweet and innocent from a bygone era when most of the world has become sharp and cynical.

She really wasn’t kidding when she said she sings to herself all the time. Even now, she’s humming to herself under her breath while she’s eating. She takes dainty bites of her burger that remind him of the way chipmunks eat. She eats fries with steak sauce instead of ketchup and that detail gets stuck in his head. It feels quintessentially Jess, something slightly left of center that just makes perfect sense for the kind of person she is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Threw in that space metaphor at the beginning, just because. I heard that there is a reference to bears in every episode of New Girl and I just think it's fun to try to work in a space reference into all my fics in the same way. It also serves as some fun foreshadowing into their future relationship and how Jess eventually becomes the center of Nick's universe. He thinks she's the sun already.
> 
> _Even after all this time_  
>  _The sun never says to the earth_  
>  _"You owe me"_  
>  _Look what happens with a love like that_  
>  _It lights the whole sky_  
>  _-Daniel Ladinsky_
> 
> Eating fries with steak sauce is a reference to The Damnwells' song ["I Will Keep The Bad Things from You"](https://youtu.be/KkV6NTzvOn8)


	4. Pulse

After they get done eating, he takes her for drinks at this local bar he knows that is close by the restaurant. Big Bob’s cousin Mellow Steve is working tonight. He always gives Nick free drinks when he’s here because Nick got him out of a felony possession charge a few years back when Nick was still in law school and Mellow Steve couldn’t afford a lawyer. 

_It was just after he had passed the bar. Nick remembers himself all of 28, feeling incredibly young and out of his depth getting to call himself someone's lawyer for the first time, standing in the courtroom in front of the judge in his one good suit trying not to sweat through his shirt._

_Mellow Steve was standing beside him, looking at him sympathetically. He leaned over to whisper to him, “Hey, Nick. Breathe. Everything is going to be okay. I won’t hold it against you if we lose.” Mellow Steve living up to his name, even though he had a record and was looking at possible prison time for being a repeat offender. He gave Nick a tight smile, trying to cheer him up. “Hey, if we win, drinks are on me for the next 20 years. How’s *that* for motivation?”_

_Nick let out a shaky laugh. “Yeah, if we win.”_

_He had been completely astounded when they actually won and the judge dropped all the charges._

_Mellow Steve pulled him into a tight bear hug afterwards. "Look at the brass balls on this guy. Best fucking lawyer in California."_

It had felt incredible to win that case, but at the same time it had been one of the last nails in the coffin on law school, on his former dreams of becoming a lawyer. He was happy he passed the bar, happy he got to save Mellow Steve from being sent to prison, but he still didn't want to be a lawyer. He just liked having those two facts define his life. He needed to prove to himself he could do it before he walked away from it. He needed to know that he was walking away from it because that's not who he wanted to be and not because he couldn't make it as a lawyer. It's one of the few times in his life he actually made an active choice in the outcome of his life. He knows his life isn't exactly going anywhere fast at the moment. He's still just the guy who dropped out of law school to work in a dive bar. But as long as he can hold on to the fact that he was smart enough to pass the bar and that he was smart enough to win a case as someone's lawyer, he thinks he's still in a good place while he figures out what he wants the rest of his life to look like. 

...Or maybe that's all bullshit and he is just rationalizing his life, rationalizing the meltdown he had in his last year of law school three semesters before graduation to go back to the exact same life he had before he ever decided to become a lawyer. He still doesn't regret dropping out of law school though. He probably would have ended up hanging out with guys like Benjamin and Peter, eventually turned into one of them, and ended up hating himself even more than he currently does.

Mellow Steve has remained true to his word so Nick has that going for him at least.

\---

It’s crowded at the bar since it’s a Saturday night. Nick places his hand on the small of Jess’s back to guide her through the crowd and make sure they don’t get separated. 

At the bar, he orders an Old-Fashioned for himself and a glass of pink wine for her. She smiles when she sees he remembers what she drinks.

“Are you trying to get me drunk, Nick?”

He gets the deer in headlights feeling. _Shit. He hopes she doesn’t think that._ “I’m not…for the record,” he stammers out.

“Chill, Nick…I’m only joking,” she laughs. Her eyes are amused. He relaxes again.

They sit at the bar and watch the people in the crowd while they finish their drinks. Nick notices a couple of guys trying to pick up girls at the bar and he's glad that's not him tonight. That's probably what he would have ended up doing at the party after Caroline dumped him again sometime between her first drink and his fourth one when he probably would have done something spectacularly dumb and desperate like ask (beg) her to get back together again. He would have gone to the bar afterwards and tried to make her jealous by flirting (unsuccessfully) with other women. It would have been pathetic. She probably wouldn't even have noticed; she probably would have found some other more attractive, more interesting, infinitely more successful guy at the party and forgotten about him. Then he would have made a scene, tried to pick a fight with that guy hitting on Caroline even though that guy would definitely have been bigger and stronger than him, and Schmidt and Coach would have had to drag him out of the club before that guy gave him a concussion or he got himself arrested for disorderly conduct. 

What's really stupid is he knows how his night would have gone if he went for that drink with Caroline, but he couldn't stop himself from doing it, not until he thought about going to rescue Jess instead. In a roundabout way, it was really Jess that saved him from making another embarrassing mistake in his life by going after Caroline. It would be weird to tell her about all this though, to unload all his psychological baggage on this girl who barely even knows him, so he just tries to be extra nice to her tonight to make up for the fact that he's been a real dick to her ever since she moved in.

\---

Nick sees some of the guys at the bar glance over at Jess to check her out but they don't come over to hit on her. Nick realizes it's because they think he and Jess are a couple. _Yeah, that's realistic,_ his inner voice drawls sarcastically. _Slow your roll there, homeboy. No one's thinking someone like you could ever be with someone like her. Not even close._ He tries to ignore the fact that the idea of them as 'a couple' actually makes him feel really good. He doesn't know where that's coming from since he's barely spent any time with her. He hasn't been on a night out in the six months since he and Caroline broke up; maybe he's just so used to being someone's boyfriend that some wires got crossed in his brain. Besides, he knows his inner voice is right and he could never get a girl like Jess in a million years. She's way out of his league. The only reason they're even together now is because he's her roommate and he just rescued her from a bad date. Life isn't a movie. This isn't a romantic comedy where they fall in love or anything just because he did that, even if he did sing to her in the middle of a restaurant. They aren't on a date; this is just two people hanging out. 

He thinks fleetingly of being Jess's wingman to find her a good guy, a way better guy than that douchebag Peter. He kind of still wants to hang out with her, but he knows the night has probably been a big letdown for Jess. If he found her another guy, a real Prince Charming this time, it would make her feel better and give her a confidence boost after her bad date. He kind of hopes she tells him not to do it so they can keep hanging out, but he'll do it if she wants him to. He looks over at Jess but she doesn't seem to notice any of the guys checking her out. Her attention is drawn to the corner where a couple of pool tables are set up.

“You want to play?” he asks her. 

She nods enthusiastically and gets up to claim an open table. He feels relieved that they can just keep hanging out and he doesn't have to be her wingman, an awkward third wheel introducing her to potential Mr. Rights and having to stand by and watch her fall in love with some other guy. He follows after her.

\---

He’s usually pretty good at pool but tonight he keeps scratching because she’s distracting him just by existing near him breathing the same air.

“You’re terrible at this, Miller,” she says, laughing at him.

“I’ve had better days,” he shrugs. 

He doesn’t mind losing because then he gets an excuse to watch her without being a creep. Some of her hair has come loose from her updo and it makes him want to reach out and undo it the rest of the way so that it’s long and down around her shoulders. He wants to see her deliciously undone. She’s the first girl that got his attention after Caroline. He had been obsessed with Caroline right up until the moment Jess had walked through the door. He remembers meeting her that first day and feeling his heart speed up when he saw her. It had felt like his heart had been leaping out of his chest like in a cartoon; he thought he was having a heart attack. But his heart is doing that same thing now, only it feels good and not bad. 

He realizes that it had been an instant physical attraction to her that he had never felt with anyone else before. It had freaked him out when he had first met her so he had been mean to her like an elementary school kid pulling on the pigtails of the girl he had a crush on. He had still been trying to hold on to Caroline then so he hadn’t been ready to move on and admit he wanted someone else. He thought he wanted to get Caroline back, but he thinks he just wanted closure. He kept chasing her because he couldn’t figure out what he had done wrong and he was too afraid to ask her, thinking that she had taken everything good in his life and walked out the door with it. But Jess had given him the courage to ask. It had hurt like hell but he thinks he really needed to hear it. The instant Caroline told him why, he was over her, just like that. He thought he was still in love with her but maybe he had just had gotten comfortable with her, staying with her out of inertia just because it was easier than venturing out into the world again to find someone new. He had met her before he went to law school, before he figured out he would always be happier working behind the bar than standing in a courtroom. Physically he's in the same place he was in before he went to law school, but mentally he's miles away from the guy he had been before, the guy he used to be, the guy Caroline fell in love with. They had made sense together then, but they had outgrown each other. They both needed to let each other go so they could find real happiness.

He thinks about attraction. Schmidt went after Jess’s model friend Cece but Nick was actually more attracted to Jess. Attraction was weird that way. It wasn’t just about a girl being ‘hot,’ something else had to be there, something undefinable. When people describe what their perfect person is on paper, it never quite fits because people in real life are more than what you can you physically describe. It’s not something you can put into words; it’s a chemistry you can only experience in person. 

\---

Jess has a couple more glasses of pink wine and gets really touchy-feely. She keeps touching his arm when she's talking to him. She stands a little too close to him, leaning her body into him. It feels like she’s flirting with him, but he hasn’t been on a date with anyone other than Caroline in over four years so he thinks it might just be in his head. He tries not to read too much into it. She’s probably just an affectionate drunk or she’s just being friendly. She might not even realize what she’s doing and this is still just two people hanging out, getting to know each other. 

\---

When it’s his turn again, Jess goes to the jukebox and flips through the menu. She puts on “Raspberry Beret.” He looks up at her. She’s singing along to it and she knows all the words. _Are you kidding me? She’s a Prince fan._ He finds himself falling for her a little more. Well the universe really isn’t playing fair now. 

“You like Prince?” he asks casually.

“Nah, I _love_ Prince,” she grins back at him. “This was my song in high school.”

“Mine too,” he says smiling back at her. “I used to be in a Prince cover band with my friend Winston.”

“You?” she says, laughing slightly.

“Yeah, eyeliner, jerry curl wig, purple suit, the whole nine yards. You heard my rendition of ‘Time of Your Life’ so you can imagine what Prince sounded like coming out of my mouth.”

“I thought you sounded pretty good,” she teases him. “You should start the band up again, Nick. You’re depriving the world of your vocal talents.”

He likes when she’s snarky. _Sweetness with a slight edge._ It’s fun bantering with her. It feels relaxed and easy shooting the breeze with her in a way it usually isn’t with most women, not for him at least. He looks in her eyes and sees that spark inside challenging him. It makes him want to find ways to push her buttons, get under her skin. He thinks she would be fun to argue with. He imagines she's someone who throws her whole body into arguing, a physical type of person who gets really fired up and passionate about her point of view. He imagines her all waving hands and tousled hair and eyes ablaze going toe to toe against him.

She has this cute smirk on her face. He thinks she’s feeling a little cocky because she’s wiping the floor with him in this game. He doesn’t mind since it seems to have cheered her up. He knows some guys would get hung up about getting beaten by a girl, but he likes that she doesn’t just let him win. 

\---

What had started as him just chasing a weird impulse actually turns out to be probably the best first non-date he’s ever been on and one of the best times he’s had just hanging out with someone. He has the butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling you get when you have a good connection with someone, physical and mental attraction firing on all cylinders. She’s actually really fun and funny when she’s not trying too hard or crying to _Dirty Dancing._ She’s cool and confident unlike how she was the other day in the bar. Maybe she just got performance anxiety trying to impress those guys and get a date. She doesn’t seem like the hook-up-in-a-bar, one-night-stand kind of girl. She seems like a relationship kind of girl, a serial monogamist like him. 

She did just get out of a long relationship so she’s probably trying to figure out who she is again. He remembers how he was when Caroline first broke up with him, _drunk dialing her in bad accents and spontaneously bursting into tears every time he found another one of her socks forgotten and left behind in his room_ , and winces internally. It hadn’t been pretty. It took almost a month before he could even get out of bed. To just go out and find someone new right after the breakup would have been unthinkable. He feels bad that they pushed Jess to find a rebound before she was ready so she ended up with that douchebag instead of a good guy. Man, if some guy doesn’t just snap her up right away, this perfect, funny dream girl, he sure doesn’t have a chance in hell of meeting anybody. If this version of her had walked into the bar that night she would have had tons of guys falling at her feet, scrambling over each other for a date, him included.


	5. Closing Time

He loses track of time hanging out with her and before he knows it, it’s last call. Time for them to head home. Nick feels a little disappointed that the night is over, but he thinks things went really well tonight so maybe Jess will want to do this again with him some time, hang out just the two of them, even without the excuse of a bad date to keep her here next to him.

\---

Jess goes to the restroom before they head out and Nick hangs out at the bar with Mellow Steve to wait for her as he closes up.

“You guys make a cute couple,” Mellow Steve says as he wipes down the bar.

“We’re not a couple,” Nick says automatically.

“Really? Shame.”

“C’mon, Steve. You don’t have to be nice to me. I know I’m not the guy. Me and her? I don’t think we even belong on the same planet.”

Mellow Steve stops what he's doing and gives him a look. “You could be the guy, Nick.”

Nick lets out a huff of laughter at that. “Bet you say that to all the guys at last call. Everyone looks like the guy at the end of the night. Every girl takes home Mr. Right Now instead of Mr. Right at closing time so they don’t have to go home alone.”

Mellow Steve shakes his head at him. “You’re selling yourself short, Nick. If you were just any guy, she would have left by now, made up some excuse to get out of here: _she has to get up early tomorrow, her friend got in a freak accident, she has to feed her cat._ You’ve seen guys on bad dates before; I know you’ve heard it all too. You hung out together for four hours. I don’t know about you, but I don’t know any girl who does that with just any guy.”

“Doesn’t mean anything. It was just hanging out.” Nick says. He takes his tumbler and knocks back the last of his drink to distract himself from thinking about the deeper implications of their conversation. Mellow Steve, ever the starry-eyed optimist. He always says all this nice shit about him whenever he comes in here, but Nick thinks that's just because he saved Mellow Steve from going to prison so Mellow Steve thinks he still owes him some large karmic debt, even though Nick always reassures him that they're even and he doesn't have to keep doing that. The ego boost is always nice but Nick has to be a realist. It doesn't do him any good to dream about things that can't ever happen. He has to grow up and set realistic expectations for his life and all that jazz, do all that adult shit everyone else is always talking about. Nick coughs slightly and wipes his mouth on the back of his hand, looking away from Mellow Steve. “We’re roommates anyway. It would be a terrible idea.” But his tone betrays him and he says that in a way that makes it seem like he's secretly thinking it might not be so terrible. 

Mellow Steve gives Nick a tight half-smile before going back to work. He wished Nick wasn’t so quick to think the worst about himself. He never could see himself clearly.

Jess comes back and sits down next to Nick. She rests her head on her folded arms on top of the bar and looks up at him. Nick cuts his conversation with Mellow Steve short and turns to her. “Ready to go?” She nods.

When they get up from the bar, his hand goes to the small of her back again to make sure she doesn’t trip. She’s wearing those dangerously tall high heels that girls wear on dates that make them walk like newborn fawns. She’s tipsy but she’s been doing admirably well all night keeping her balance. It would suck if she twisted her ankle on the same night she got stood up though so he’s just being cautious, watching out for her like he promised himself he would in his head.

”See ya, Steve,” Nick says to him, throwing him a salute. 

Mellow Steve gives him a nod goodbye. “You could be the guy, Nick,” he calls out after him. “ _Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid._ ”

Jess snickers. “What’s all that about?”

“Inside joke,” Nick shrugs.

\---

He’s been pacing himself pretty well tonight so he’s still relatively sober. He holds out his hand for her keys, but instead of just handing them to him, Tipsy Jess decides it's a good idea to toss them to him. She has terrible aim even though he's only standing a few feet away from her so he has to dive to catch them. By a stroke of luck, he is able to catch them on his first try without fumbling and making himself look like a complete idiot in front of her. He holds them up triumphantly. _Total cool guy move._ It's really stupid but he hopes that impresses her in some way. 

"Nice throwing there, Ace."

"Huh, you can do _that_ but you don't have the hand-eye coordination for pool?"

"Yeah, it's a real enigma."

\---

He ends up driving her car again to get them home. She’s curled up on the passenger seat watching him, blinking slowly. Every time they pass by another streetlamp, her eyes catch the light. He sees the neon blue glint of her irises in his peripheral vision. She’s humming a new song. He recognizes it as “Closing Time,” the bane of every bartender’s existence.

He pulls a face at her. “Ugh, that’s the worst song ever, Jess. Go back to singing Prince.”

“You don’t play that during last call? I thought that was mandatory in every bar.”

“Never. We used to have that in the jukebox but we had to take the record out and destroy it. Too many drunk assholes thought it was funny to put that on every night during last call. Trust me, if you heard that song every single day for a year, you would never want to hear it again either. That’s one of our rules: No ‘Closing Time’ in the bar.”

"Aww…I still think it’s a good song.” She starts humming “Starfish and Coffee” instead, but it’s too late and the infectious chorus of “Closing Time” is already stuck in his head.

_I know who I want to take me home…_

He looks over at Jess. She smiles back at him and he thinks it might not be such a bad song after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title references the famous '90s song ["Closing Time"](https://youtu.be/xGytDsqkQY8) by Semisonic
> 
> ["Starfish and Coffee"](https://youtu.be/cQ08PlzgaNQ?t=4s) is another Prince song.
> 
> "Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid." is a Basil King quote. It is falsely attributed to Goethe in the film _Almost Famous _, a movie Zooey Deschanel stars in.__


	6. Burn

When they make it back to the loft, they end up walking up the stairs together instead of taking the elevator. Nick would normally hate that ( _What is he, training for a marathon?_ ), but he’s glad for it tonight because it gives him an excuse to drag his feet and stay on this non-date with her. Right now they’re in a space where it’s just him and her and he can forget about the fact that he’s approaching 30 and still living with roommates and has no idea what he’s doing with his life. She’s looking at him like she’s _happy_ , happy to be with him, like he’s the guy in the bar that women would actually want to go home with by choice and not just the last one left at the end of the night, _‘he’ll do’_ , just because they are desperate and lonely.

It’s taking them a while to make it up all these stairs and at some point it feels like the mood shifts. Jess keeps glancing over at him and then looking away again. It starts to make him nervous because he doesn’t know what that means and he thinks he should. He takes it back; he really wishes they had taken the elevator instead. They would have been in the loft by now and he could hide in his room and protect her idea of him and the memories of their perfect night together. 

A lightbulb in his head clicks on. _Shit, did she think this was a date?_ He couldn't pin down why that jittery, nervous energy between them felt familiar before but now it's glaringly obvious. Only Nick Miller would accidentally ask a girl out on a date. What was he thinking? He had just wanted to cheer her up, keep her from spending the entire night alone. He never actually used the word ‘date’ but he runs the entire night back through his head and how all his behavior could be interpreted as decidedly date-like. He wished he hadn’t just figured this out. He had been totally oblivious all night thinking this wasn’t a date and there wasn’t anything at stake. He had been Nick The Friend all night, a guy who likes hole-in-the-wall restaurants and dive bars, someone who just told her a bunch of embarrassing stories about himself and rambled on about his zombie novel and weird conspiracy theories he has for over four hours, not a guy any girl would ever want to date. He knew he should have taken her some place fancy. He just gave her the impression that this is how he treats girls on dates. He cringes at the fact that he just took her out for burgers and beer and pool like she was "one of the guys" like Schmidt or Coach. Maybe that would have been good enough if he were still some pimply-faced teenager back in high school but he's almost 30. God, he hopes she doesn't think this was his A+ material. This was not his A game. He would have been able to come up with something way better than this if he hadn't been an idiot and realized he was actually asking her out on a date. He’s sorely out of practice at being Single Nick, the guy who knows how to clean himself up long enough to flirt and do things to impress girls so they’ll give him a chance and see him as a real option instead of a loser who is going nowhere fast in life. 

It suddenly feels like the entire weight of the world is on his shoulders. The entire dating playbook runs through his head, all those expectations of how a guy is supposed to act on a first date to make sure he checks off enough of a girl's boxes to land a second date and he can’t remember if he even did half of them. He can feel his palms start to sweat, anxiety clawing at his insides. The butterflies in his stomach are gone. They've been replaced by a bad twisty feeling in his gut, the feeling of something gone awry in your life that you should have stopped but is now irrevocably unfixable. He really likes her and now he’s gone and screwed everything up. It's been over six months since he broke up with Caroline, but he hasn't even thought about dating someone after her yet. If he had, he definitely wouldn't have picked Jess to start with. She's not the rebound girl; she's the "wife material" girl, the girl you take home to meet your mom because you know you want her to be in your life for a long time. You only get one chance with a girl like Jess and he just wasted it on a nothing "just friends" date with her that she probably won't even remember next week. He didn’t plan for this. Why didn’t he plan for this? 

Then he is struck by an even worse realization. _If this is a date, she probably expects him to kiss her at the end of it._ He sneaks a glance at Jess out of the corner of his eye. _Does she want him to kiss her?_ He thinks they had a pretty good time together tonight but that was by "just friends" standards. For all he knows, it could have been terrible by dating standards, the kind of date that ends with a pity hug and a peck on the cheek, the kind of date that puts a guy into the "just friends" category with a girl forever. He’s trying to read her, figure her out, but he can’t pick up any clear signals either way. He wishes women had traffic lights over their heads that signaled green for go. He needs something like that. He’s totally clueless around women on his best days and he hasn’t gone on a date with someone new in over four years. He’s used to being a boyfriend. He’s not used to whatever this vibe is, the uncertainty of knowing what things he is or isn’t allowed to do, having to establish boundaries with a whole new person. 

It sucks that people can’t just come out and say what they mean, just ask for what they want. They have to dance around each other, play this whole game of attraction and seduction that he doesn’t get, that he’s never gotten. He doesn’t have any moves. He knows he doesn’t make the best first impression; it usually takes a while for a girl to warm up to him. If he likes a girl, he just hangs around her subtly making his way into her life and they end up spending more and more time together until one day she finally sees him as boyfriend material. And he never makes a move until he's absolutely certain there is something there between them and all the stuff he's feeling isn't something he just made up in his head. He knows he has an overactive imagination and likes to daydream far too much about better versions of his life he could be living so it takes him a while to catch onto the fact that a girl actually likes him back. He has to make sure it isn't some kind of mean prank the universe is pulling on him, him reading too much into something that doesn't actually exist. If he's lucky, the girl will eventually think to herself, _Hey, this guy isn’t the best looking guy or the smartest or even the most successful, but he’s really not such a bad guy. He wouldn’t be the worst guy in the world to date._ That's the way his dating life usually goes. He knows he's never been anyone's first choice; it's something he's gotten used to being him. This is probably the farthest he’s ever gotten with a girl this fast.

He turns the idea of kissing Jess over in his head. Does _he_ want to kiss _her?_ He looks over at her and decides he does. He really, really does. But he’s worried about screwing things up with her even more than he already has since he still can’t tell if she wants him to kiss her or not. The safe route is just to leave things as they are. Pretend he's still oblivious and this was always "just friends" hanging out. "Just friends" wouldn't be terrible with her. He thinks she would be a good person to have in his life, even if "just friends" is all they ever are to each other. But he doesn't just want that with her. It would be just like every other relationship he's ever been in with a girl before when he knows she's not just any girl. He's always "the friend," the boyfriend without the rewards, the weird detour or the backup guy that girls love hanging out with right up until they find the guy they're really supposed to end up with. He knows it's a lot to hope for, but he wants this time to be different.

His fingers keep grazing her hand because the stairwell is small and they’re trying to walk next to each other as they go up the stairs. He feels the impulse to reach out and hold her hand, but he doesn’t know if that would be weird. That would be even worse to get wrong than kissing. It feels more intimate somehow. People on dates kiss, near strangers; people in relationships hold hands. 

For some reason, thinking about holding her hand calms him down though. He doesn’t do it because he decides that would definitely be weird, but he focuses on imagining the feeling of doing that so he is able to calm himself down enough to stop the internal freakout happening in his brain.

He looks over at her and catches her eye. She smiles at him and the tension between them dissipates. The mood shifts back to feeling good again the rest of the way up the stairs.

\---

Too soon they’re at the loft door. 

Jess pauses at the door and turns to him. She’s suddenly shy again, looking down at her feet, tucking her hair behind her ear. “I had a really nice time tonight, Nick. Thanks for rescuing me.”

“Me too, Jess. I should actually be thanking you. Thanks for waiting around and being my excuse to skip a lame party.”

She laughs at that and he feels his heartrate spike. _God, she has a great laugh._ He thinks he sees her eyes drop to his mouth for a split second. He thinks this is the moment; this is his chance. He’ll probably never get another one. He’s either going to take it or it’s going to slip through his fingers. He gathers all his courage and leans in to kiss her but she turns away from him to open the loft door with her key and they bump noses. He pretty much missed her mouth by a mile. The cold sweat of panic runs through him. Warning signals are firing off in his head, _abort, abort_ , his brain backpedaling like crazy, trying to find a way out of this terrible decision. _Shit! He misread her._

_Why did he do that? He never does anything unless he knows what’s going to happen. He should have just left it alone. Why didn’t he just leave it alone? They were having a good time, a good night together, and he just ruined it. There might have been something there but he just killed it. He pushed it too far, too fast. He let Caroline get into his head. He heard her voice echoing in his head all night telling him that she didn’t even know he cared about her until she was gone. It made him do something insane...take this chance to kiss this girl that barely even knows him without taking months to analyze it a million different ways like he normally would. If he had done that he would have made sure their first kiss was perfect like in the movies and not sweaty and awkward like it is right now. (Or at least he would have been able to find her mouth. Jesus Christ, that was terrible.) He thinks about Mellow Steve, his well-intentioned but incredibly misguided friend who put the idea in his head that he could be the guy and how he had let that faint glimmer of hope work its way into his brain. He knew he wasn’t the guy._

“Oh, God, I’m so sorry, Jess…” he stammers out, mortified, cringing back. “Can we just forget that just happened?” It had all been in his head; this was just friends hanging out. This wasn’t a date and he just tried to kiss her. What a dick move. He needs his own douchebag jar now. He’s turned into Schmidt.

She licks her lips and stares up at him with her piercing blue gaze. Her breathing is shallow, her cheeks slightly pink from what he just tried to do to her, probably second-hand embarrassment for him. She probably hates him now, thinks he was just trying to get in her pants the entire time they were hanging out together, like he expected her to sleep with him as some sort of consolation prize just for showing up. He’s frozen there. He can’t even turn around and collect the rest of his remaining dignity and go home because they fucking live together. He’s going to have to move. He’s probably going to have to move to fucking Siberia because he’ll never be able to face her again after tonight. He’s going to be the creepy guy that lives with her that pretended to be her friend just so he could kiss her. Can people die from embarrassment? This sure feels like dying. Scratch that...this is probably even worse because he thinks if he were actually dying, it would be over by now. He wishes the ground would swallow him up. He wishes he would get struck by lightning. Anything so they don’t have to go in there into the place they both live in together and go through the whole charade of pretending that didn't just happen. Schmidt was so fucking right with the no-nail oath. He hates when Schmidt is right. He didn’t even sleep with her yet and it’s already so fucking awkward from him even trying to nail her mouth with his mouth. 

He doesn’t know what’s going to happen next, what to expect. Is she going to slap him? That would be bad enough, but what if she tries to hurt him with her words? Say something properly cutting or mean to put him in his place? He doesn’t think he would be able to take that. Nick knows he's not really that tough. No guy really is. They all turn into Bambi when faced with the reality of a girl they really like. The slightest hint of rejection crushes them. He feels naked and vulnerable standing out here. God, he hopes he doesn’t start crying. He started doing that a lot after Caroline left. He thought it was all out of his system, but there is a strong possibility he could spontaneously morph back into Sad Nick right now. That would be the cherry on this ultimate sundae of embarrassment. 

It feels like an eternity, his face hot from shame, his heart beating loudly in his ears like he’s about to have a stroke or a heart attack, while they stand in the hallway and stare at each other. In reality it must have only been a few seconds while everything runs through his mind and he has a mini panic attack in the hallway. She blinks at him and that breaks the spell. “Okay,” she says, right before she grabs the front of his shirt and pulls him into her. It takes a second for his brain to catch up. He realizes she did want him to kiss her but she’s giving him a do-over for his terrible aim, his terrible timing. This time he makes direct contact with her mouth. 

The first press of his lips against hers is electrifying. It wipes his mind completely blank. It takes all the doubt and fear and panic away. His mind is a bright, blank canvas. Everything he thought he knew about the universe is gone in an instant. The rest of the world ceases to exist. The world is reduced to just him and her and the sensation of being connected to her in this way. Sparks radiate out from that pinpoint of connection and travel through every one of his cells pouring life into him. Every inch of him feels golden and new. The warmth of her exquisite mouth opens under his, inviting him in. He loses himself in the intoxicating taste of pink wine and something distinctly _her_ , sharp and sweet. His hands go up to cup her face, to feel her skin under his hands. He marvels at being allowed to touch her this way. He reaches up to loosen her updo so he can tangle his hands in her hair. She makes a sound of pleasure into his mouth halfway between a gasp and a moan that really turns him on and he can’t help pressing himself into her, needing to get as close as humanly possible to her and hear her make that sound for him again. He ends up pushing her into the door, pressing their bodies together. His hands are on either side of her head pinning her against the door underneath him but she seems into it. She presses her body up against his creating a delicious friction between them. Her fingers remain tangled in the front of his shirt holding him to her. She kisses him like she never wants to stop and that's a good thing because he never wants to stop kissing her.

It's the kiss to end all kisses. Startling in its intensity like there was a pent up need in him for her that he didn’t even know existed. The fact that she rises to meet him and might want him back in the same way blows his mind and knocks him completely flat on his back. He can feel his life changing right then…all the decisions in his life, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, taking him up to this moment with her. For once he’s not all stuck up in his head thinking. He thinks too damn much…about everything. It paralyzes him. For once in his life, he’s just doing. A man of action playing the romantic lead in his own love story instead of being the guy on the sidelines of his life watching some other guy win the girl. He can feel all the endorphins rushing through his bloodstream. He feels more alive than he's ever been. He doesn’t know what the hell is going to happen next but he’s not afraid. He's stopped being afraid. It’s exhilarating to let go, to let himself fall into something this wonderful. This must be what skydiving feels like for people who are into that, what other people who are adrenaline junkies chase. For once in his life, he’s truly brave.

_Who the fuck is this guy? He’s never been this guy. It’s not him, but he likes it. It’s who he wishes he were in the rest of his life. He guesses he’s only this guy because this girl walked into his life. Sometimes you meet someone and you just know they’re going to change your life. He hasn’t even spent that much time with her, but when he’s with her every decision he makes is just so clear, like he has never been more certain of anything else in his entire life. It’s a clarity in his mind, the world sharp and in focus for the first time in his life. When he's with her, he's not all caught up in his head, worried about what everyone thinks of him, about the million different bad consequences attached to every single decision he makes. He's just present with her, living his life, marveling at how much joy and happiness and sunshine could be embodied in the shape of one human being. That feeling of being with her makes him do all the things he wants to do but is afraid of doing. He’s never wanted anything as much as he wants the moment he is living in right now._

They finally both pull back for air, panting, breathless. “Is it too early to ask for a second date?” he jokes. She pulls him in again and he thinks that’s a pretty good answer. He’s diving back in to kiss her again, kissing into her smile. His hands drop to her waist, holding her more closely to him. Her hands run along his back like she’s trying to memorize the shape of him. Her fingers play with the hair on the base of his neck. They skim along his skin every time he turns his head to kiss her in a different way. It feels like an intensely intimate gesture and makes shivers run through him. He kisses down into the hollow of her throat. He rests his head in the curve between her shoulder and her neck. They are breathing hard into each other. She runs her hand through his hair, holding him to her. 

“I like you, Jess,” he whispers, a secret only she can hear. He breathes the words into her skin. 

“I like you too,” she whispers back. He hears the smile in her voice, the sincere and soft affection there so he knows it’s the truth and the words aren’t just hollow, something nice people say to fill the empty space. _She feels it._ She feels everything he's feeling too.

He steps back from her so she can open the door. She takes his hand in hers and he presses a kiss to the back of her hand just because he can, because he wants to kiss every inch of her whenever he gets the chance. She opens the door and leads him into the loft.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is a reference to the Blue Oyster Cult song [Burnin' For You](https://youtu.be/pTvbXMRMnHo). 
> 
> Fun double meaning for the fakeout ending. Nick thinks he’s been rejected but it was actually just bad timing, both of them unsure whether to push it forward since they both just got out of long relationships, but there is actually desire there from both sides. Jess was flirting with Nick in the bar but Nick doesn’t usually take a chance on anything unless he’s absolutely sure so he was playing it safe. But the conversation between them at the bar about regrets was running through Nick’s mind the whole night, so it made him brave enough to put himself way out there and risk making a move at the end, even though that was out of character for him. And if Nick does that, Jess is right there along with him. She actually wanted him to make a move earlier, but he didn't even though she was dropping all those hints, so she thought he just wasn't interested in her and was going to let it go. In both this fic and in canon, Nick has to choose to start it. Nick is his own catalyst.
> 
> This fic is kind of like a sped up version of the Nick and Jess arc on the show: no slow burn, but a sprint all the way to the end. I like how this puts Nick and Jess on a more equal footing than what is shown in canon. I love the Nick arc in S2 but I don’t think we’ve seen enough from Jess about wanting Nick as much as he wants her so it feels uneven, especially now that we are in S6 with no equivalent Jess arc in sight. It’s not just about Nick choosing Jess; it’s also about Jess choosing him back.


	7. Epilogue: The End is the Beginning

They’re standing in the hallway outside their bedroom doors. His hand is cupping her cheek and he’s just looking at her, gazing into her eyes and taking a mental snapshot of this moment. He can feel something big and significant happening between them right now. He doesn’t know what it is yet, but he wants to find out. He wants to step outside of himself and let himself want this, let himself choose this path even though he doesn’t know how it’s going to end and he usually never does anything if he doesn’t know what is going to happen. 

\---

Maybe this will all go really badly. They barely know each other and they’re already living together. But he’s actually happy about that because that means he gets to see her every day. He wants to give this a chance even if it’s fucking terrifying, take a chance on something that it feels like he has been waiting his entire life for. 

He realizes that he had already made up his mind at the party. He had chosen between the two versions of himself he could have been. He could have been who he used to be, choosing Caroline because she was familiar, falling into old patterns, afraid of everything, scared of letting himself want something new. But he had chosen to be this other guy, a man in control of his own destiny, someone who believes in chasing big dreams and weird impulses and who can feel the pulse of the entire universe running through him and is hungry for everything it has to offer. He had decided right then to let Jess become an important part of his life. He had chosen to let himself want this, the way he hasn’t wanted anything in a very long time.

And he knows he would never have been able to do that if he hadn’t met her.

\---

He leans in to kiss her good night one last time.

“Night, Jess. See you tomorrow,” he whispers to her. His hand lingers on her cheek before they part to walk back to their separate bedrooms.

As tempting as it is, he’s not going to sleep with her tonight because he wants this to be real. He wants to take his time with her and take her out on real dates where they get all dressed up and learn all about her, all the special, secret details that make up one Jessica Day. He needs to do this right because she’s the type of girl that deserves a good love story, the kind of love story they can tell their kids about in a distant future where they share a life together.

When he gets to his door and turns around again, he sees her standing in her doorway watching him. 

She blows him a kiss and he catches it and presses it to his cheek for her.

“Sweet dreams, honey,” he says to her. 

She smiles her radiant Jessica Day smile back at him before closing her door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is a reference to the Howie Day song [“Perfect Time of Day”](https://youtu.be/hjldv54ln6g)
> 
> End scene inspired by [this](http://nick-and-jess-are-my-babies.tumblr.com/post/147743290771/mrnickmiller-novemberivy-s-a-m-e-love) lovely piece of Nick & Jess fan art.


End file.
